On 27th September Gerard Sprenger and John Cameron-Webb will be conducting a guided tour of the Market Garden battlefield and on 28th touring the border area of Germany looking at the Rhine Crossing battle of Feb-March 1944 Operation Veritable. The tour will finish at the National War Museum in Overloon, near Venray.

Timetable:

10.30 hrs: Group will meet at Airborne Memorial on the Ginkelseheide on the A244 leading towards Arnhem from Ede
11.30 hrs: Drive to the Wolfheze area and look at the advance of the Airborne Division towards Arnhem
12.30 hrs: Drive to Jack Frost bridge
13.30 hrs: Lunch
14.30 hrs: Visit Airborne Museum in Oosterbeek followed by a visit to sites around where fighting took place
16.00 hrs: Drive past Groesbeek towards Cleve to hotel Waldschlösschen,
Kranenburgerstrasse 1, 47533 Kleve: Telephone: 0049-282172640 (recommend you book accommodation as soon as you decide to take part)19.00 hrs: Evening Meal together

The Geograph® Britain and Ireland project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland, and you can be part of it.
More information: http://www.geograph.org.uk/
A travelogue of the East of Mainland Scotland, but framed within the Geograph project that aims to photograph every square kilometre of the UK. Julian Paren is involved in this enterprise and focus on The Black Isle where he lives and has his own project to photograph every square km of The Black Isle.

Julian ParenA Life of Visiting High Latitudes

A Life of Visiting High Latitudes

This is Julian’s autobiographical journey that started as a schoolboy with a yearning for high mountains and the Polar Regions that culminated in becoming a professional Antarctic scientist for 25 years.
Early in his life Julian visited Iceland, Greenland, and islands in the High Canadian Arctic and has an adventurous time, besides developing as an environmental scientist.
The talk will include Diary extracts and highly regarded photographs.

Martin PapworthChedworth Roman Villa

Most recently Martin Papworth he has been involved in uncovering mosaics at Chedworth Roman Villa after a new cover building was designed and erected over the West Range of the Villa.

Martin PapworthStonehenge Riverside Project

Martin carried out work at the great Avebury Henge and discovered buried megaliths and was also involved in the Stonehenge Riverside Project which worked out a new chronology for the Neolithic and Bronze Age landscape.

A Balkan Adventure
In 2013 I spent the summer walking from Trieste to Istanbul. To be more exact, walking, hitch-hiking and generally bumbling, which I thought would be the best way to enjoy the mountains and meet people in the remotest villages. I’d visited the Balkans briefly in the 1970s, since when they’ve abandoned communism, endured brutal conflicts and taken small steps towards coming together with the rest of Europe. From Albania the route took me through Greek Macedonia and Bulgaria’s Pirin and Rhodope Mountains to the River Evros, where migrants play cat-and-mouse with European Union border guards. In October I reached Istanbul – capital of two empires each lasting 1,000 years – and finally the Bosporus, where Europe gives way to Asia.

During the GNE lecture season, events are regularly held and talks are given about once a month and unless otherwise stated, these are delivered in English. The visiting speakers are all experts in their chosen fields and their lectures are both informative and entertaining. They may feature different aspects of British life, arts and culture, places and people. Occasionally we are also treated to a traveller`s tale. Wherever possible, lectures are illustrated.
An overview of this year`s programme is given below. For more details on our events and talks please click events & talks. For the full programme with dates, venues and entry fees per branch, please click branches.

On 27th September John Cameron-Webb and Gerard Sprenger will be conducting a guided tour of the Market Garden battlefield and on 28th touring the border area of Germany looking at the Rhine Crossing battle of Feb-March 1944 Operation Veritable. The tour will finish at the National War Museum in Overloon, near Venray.Gerard Sprenger: Former history teacher; avid WWII historian and Dutch Grenadier Guardsman.John Cameron-Webb: Battlefield guide mainly focussing on WWI, but has conducted Market Garden with Gerard in the past and Waterloo tours. John has organized already four successful trips for GNE and CADS members about WWI and WWII:
• Amsterdam: `War walk` (2011, with Gerard Sprenger);
• Ieper: (2011);
• Albert (France): `Somme Battlefields` (2012);
• Arnhem: Battlefield Tour `Market-Garden` (2013).

Julian Paren is a physicist by training with a PhD in glaciology awarded by the University of Cambridge for research on the electrical properties of ice carried out at the Scott Polar Research Institute. After a spell as Nuffield Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham he joined the British Antarctic Survey in 1976 and made nine visits to Antarctica. In his later years at BAS he was Director’s Assistant and Head of Information and Archives. Throughout his time at BAS and in retirement he ran adult-education courses for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning.

Martin Papworth specializes in the history and archaeology of the Dorset Iron Age and has written a book on the local tribe known as the Durotriges. He has worked for the NT for 27 years and has been involved in a range of archaeological projects. Martin carried out work at the great Avebury Henge and discovered buried megaliths and was also involved in the Stonehenge Riverside Project which worked out a new chronology for the Neolithic and Bronze Age landscape. Most recently he has been involved in uncovering mosaics at Chedworth Roman Villa after a new cover building was designed and erected over the West Range of the Villa.

Paul Franssen has been teaching British and South African Literature at the University of Utrecht since 1979. His expertise on the Renaisance is accompanied by his interest in some more modern areas and people, such as British 20th century drama. Jane Austen, J. M. Coetzee and Oacar Wilde.

John Pilkington has been called “one of Britain’s greatest tellers of travellers’ tales”.
In 1983, after journeys in Africa and Latin America, he completed a 500-mile solo crossing of the western Nepal Himalaya, and told the story in his first book, Into Thin Air. His interest in Asia grew further with the opening in 1986 of the border between Pakistan and China, making it possible – for the first time in forty years – to retrace virtually the whole of the Silk Road. John was one of the first modern travellers to do so, and he wrote about the journey in An Adventure on the Old Silk Road. This was followed in 1991 by An Englishman in Patagonia; recounting eight months spent exploring the southernmost tip of South America.
In 2000 he became one of only four people in modern times to walk the 1,600-mile Royal Road of the Incas in the Andes of Ecuador and Peru. In 2003 he explored the Mekong River and, with two Tibetans, reached and mapped its source at over 17,000 feet. In 2006 he turned his attention to the Sahara Desert, and joined a camel caravan carrying salt for 450 miles from the mines of Taoudenni to Timbuktu.

John McAleer is Lecturer in History at the University of Southampton and historian of the British Empire. His work focuses on the British encounter and engagement with the wider world in the 18th and 19th centuries, situating the history of empire in its global and maritime contexts.
He is interested in the relationships, interactions and patterns of exchange created by the British Empire, and in assessing the impact of these experiences on both British and colonial societies. Previously, as Curator of Imperial and Maritime History at the National Maritime Museum, he worked on the development and delivery of gallery projects, focusing on Atlantic and Indian Ocean history.

JOHN SUTTON was a Senior Lecturer in History at Anglia Polytechnic University. He specialises in the history of Early Modern England and the English Renaissance (1558-1640), the English Civil War and the Jacobite cause. In 1983-84 he made a television series on Eastern England in the 1640s, entitled ‘A War in the Kingdom’ which was screened on Anglia TV. He regularly hosts special interest gatherings on a wide range of historical subjects. He has previously talked to the GNE branches on topics such as Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, Charles I and Elizabeth I. His last GNE lecture tour was in October 2009 when he spoke on `Rob Roy - hero or villain`.

Dr. Adam White is curator at Lotherton Hall, a country house museum between Leeds and York. He also has a research interest in the architecture and sculpture of the early 17th century in Britain when ties between England and the Netherlands were particularly close. Dr. Adam White will give a talk about the life and work of Nicholas Stone the Elder (1586/7-1647) who was the leading English mason-sculptor in the period c.1620-42. Stone the Elder was a pupil of Hendrick de Keyser, master mason to the City of Amsterdam and a leading Dutch sculptor of his time, and he married de Keyser`s daughter Mayken (Mary). Dr. Adam White has written several articles on Stone and he features largely in the Biographical Dictionary of London Tomb Sculptors c.1560-1660 which he published with the Walpole Society in London in 1999 (with supplement 2009).

Arthur van Essen taught English in Dutch secondary schools, and from 1971 was lecturer, then senior lecturer, and finally full professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Pedagogy in the University of Groningen. He became professor emeritus in 2003. He has lectured extensively throughout Europe, Africa and America, often on missions for the British Council. One of his chief interests is the teaching of English to speakers of other languages.